Where We Came From
by TheThingsIRegret
Summary: A series of vignettes showing how Kylo Ren came to be aware of and idolize Darth Vader. Complete for now!
1. His Grandma and Grandpa

Ben Solo was five years old when he first asked his mother about his grandparents.

The knock on the door was sharp and hollow, like metal on metal in the night. Leia Organa let out a sigh and set her datapad aside.

What is it, Threepio?"

But when the doors opened, it was her son who stood there, holding some kind of metal toy. A tool, more likely, something Han had given him, however many months ago he'd been here last.

 _Don't think about that. Don't think about him._ Leia forced her face into a smile.

"Mommy?"

"Ben, it's past your bedtime." Above the datapad, a holographic map of a contested supply route flickered and spun. Leia had to get this done tonight. If she didn't, the convoy set to go out tomorrow would either be delayed, or would be forced to use the old route, right past a known base of Snoke's.

But her son still stood in the doorway, his eyes wide and his hair unruly. Leia's smile softened, grew genuine. She opened her arms.

"Come here. Sit with me. Did you have a nightmare?"

"No." Ben's cheek was warm against Leia's arm, his breathing as calm and soothing as his bright, pulsing presence in the Force. "Mommy?" He looked up and over his shoulder at her. "Do I have a grandma and a grandpa?"

Leia's next breath was sharp, and she made herself let it out slowly. "Not anymore," she said. "Why?"

"Ennis has a grandma and a grandpa."

Leia nodded. "That's right." Ben had been on a playdate today, that was all. "Ennis's mommy was a pilot. Did you know that?"

Ben considered this, nodded. "Her X-wing exploded."

It was a crude explanation, but true. "That's right. And his daddy is a mechanic, here at the base."

"Like Chewie?"

Leia didn't think Chewie would especially like being called a mechanic, but the comparison still made her smile. "Sort of like Chewie. And like Chewie, he's very busy. So his parents—Ennis's grandma and grandpa—help take care of his family, too."

The datapad beeped—an incoming messsage. "Is that all, Ben? I really need to finish this tonight."

"Wait!"

The urgency in Ben's voice was enough to still Leia's hand, though her eyes darted to the lighted screen.

"Why don't you and Daddy have mommies and daddies?"

Leia closed her eyes, inhaled deeply. Reminded herself that Ben had no way of knowing what he had asked. "Your father never knew his parents," she said slowly. Carefully. "We think they died when he was just a little boy. And my parents... My parents died on Alderaan."

Ben watched her face, unblinking, unmoving. "Alderaan exploded too."

"That's right."

A silence fell over the room, and although it was not the answer she had most feared giving, a sudden rush of memory swept over Leia. Why wasn't Han here? Why did these questions have to come in the middle of the night, when she couldn't at least wake up Luke and beg him to answer them for her?

"Do you want to see their picture?" She pushed the words past dry, tense lips. It was better than having to explain, at least, how Alderaan had "exploded."

Ben slid from her lap, or Leia picked him up, and he stood, silently, watching her with those same deep eyes as she opened a drawer, slid her hand to the back, and pulled out the ancient datachip. It was a treasure, something one of the last Alderaanian survivors had given her—an old news broadcast, saved for reasons sentimental to someone else in another place, another time. Bail and Breha Organa, standing together on the balcony of the palace where she had grown up.

Ben stared at the image, flickering into life in the space above Leia's console. For a moment, the beginnings of a smile played across his lips. But then, whatever it had been fell away, and he looked Leia in the eyes again.

"They don't look like you." He said it like a question. "Ennis's grandma and grandpa look like his dad."

Leia swallowed. "That's very... perceptive of you, Ben." Tears were welling up in her eyes. What would Han say, to something like this? He'd have a better answer than she did.

The datapad beeped again. But this was her son. This was Leia's son, and she knew she couldn't lie to him.

"Do you know what it means to be adopted?"

Ben shook his head.

"Well, you know where babies come from, right?" This, at least, she had told him—thank the Force for pregnant comptrollers. "That you grew here"—she rested one hand on her stomach—"until you were old enough to be born?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, sometimes the mommy who grows the baby can't take care of it. Maybe she dies, like Ennis's mommy. Or maybe she's very young. Or very sick. Or very poor. And sometimes there are other mommies, whose bodies can't have babies, but their hearts are very big, and those babies whose first mommies can't take care of them go to live with a second mommy, who loves them very much."

"So my grandma wasn't your real mommy?" Ben's eyes narrowed, and the space between his eyebrows lined.

Leia looked back at the flickering image, at Breha Organa waving to the crowd. "She was my real mommy, Ben."

"What about your other mommy? Your first mommy?"

"I don't know," Leia lied. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and picked up the datapad. "I'm sorry, Ben. I really have to take care of this now." She pressed another manufactured smile onto her lips, and pressed the com button. "Threepio? I need you to put Ben to bed."


	2. A Great Jedi

"Uncle Luke?"

The voice of his nephew broke through the calm of Luke Skywalker's trance. The Jedi Master opened his eyes. "Yes, Ben?" Luke rose from his meditative position on the ground and motioned for Ben to sit beside him on a long, low bench. The boy's presence was... questioning. Not quite troubled. But something was on his mind.

"Is something wrong, Ben?"

"No." The boy frowned. "Not really. Uncle Luke...?"

Luke nodded, silent, waiting for him to go on.

"Why do you and Mom have different last names?"

Luke smiled. That was an easy question. "You know that your mom and I were adopted?"

Ben nodded.

"And that her parents—her adoptive parents—were Bail and Breha Organa?"

"Bail and...?"

"Breha Organa," Luke repeated, and waited for the boy to repeat the names back. "That's right. So her last name is Organa. Did I ever tell you where I lived, when I was a kid like you?"

Ben, still silent, shook his head.

"Well, I grew up on a planet called Tatooine. I bet you've never heard of it, right?"

"Right."

"There's nothing there but a lot of desert," Luke said, but he still smiled a little at the memory. "I lived with my aunt and uncle."

A light came on in Ben's eyes. "And _their_ name was Skywalker!"

Luke shook his head, and a sadness he'd almost forgotten about settled over him. _Uncle Owen. Aunt Beru._ He'd hardly even had the time to mourn them. "No," he said. "Their name was Lars. Owen and Beru Lars. They were moisture farmers. On Tatooine..." But Ben's gaze had started to wander. "Never mind.

"I knew they weren't my parents," Luke went on. "I called them Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. And they gave me..." His voice caught, just for a second. For an impossible fraction of a second that he hoped Ben wouldn't hear. "They gave me... my father's name."

"Your real father?"

Luke could only nod.

"So Mom's name should be Skywalker too?"

Luke closed his eyes, let out a long breath. Should? That was a very strong word.

"Her father was also Anakin Skywalker."

"Luke?" It was Leia's voice, this time, that cut through his thoughts, his inner calm. "What are the two of you doing out here?"

But she knew. She knew, and when Luke looked up at her, it was with apology in his eyes.

"Ben was just asking about... about our family. He wanted to know why you weren't a Skywalker, too."

"Ben." Leia looked down at him, her voice—and her presence—half afraid and half admonishing.

"Leia?"

Luke would never attempt to influence her using the Force—wasn't even sure, for that matter, if he could. But she understood what he wanted, and even as she shook her head— _Don't make me do this_ —she sat down at the far end of the bench, on the other side of her son.

"Your mom has taught you a little about the Force, right?" Luke said. "You know that people like me, who use the Force to protect others, are called Jedi."

Again, Ben nodded.

"My father was... a Jedi," Luke said, the catch in his voice just a little longer, a little more obvious this time. "He was very powerful. And just like you have your mother's eyes, or your father's dark hair"—he reached out, and ruffled Ben's hair with one hand—"your mother and I... and you too... are strong with the Force because of your grandfather."

Ben looked, then, from Luke's face to Leia's, trying to see, perhaps, the features that tied them together.

"Am I like him?"

The question took Luke by surprise. He looked over Ben's head, to Leia. There was fear in her eyes—fear, and a question.

"I think you are," he said. "Strong, and bright. And brilliant, just like your Jedi grandfather."

Leia looked down, away. And she darkened. Something cold and grey passed over her face, and over her being in the Force.

"Our birth mother was a senator," she said, too quickly, as if trying to cover up what Luke had exposed.

"You said you didn't know her." Ben's eyes grew wide, and Luke's heart fell. They knew so little about their birth mother. But had Leia really lied about what she knew?

"We never met her," Luke said. "She died... when we were born, or shortly after." The records had never been clear about Padme Amidala's death—she disappeared from them, just as Darth Vader and the Empire were ushered in. "We know she was a senator for the old Republic. She came from a planet called Naboo."

"Was she a Jedi?" Ben's question was quick—too quick.

Luke made his answer slow.

"We don't know," he replied, "if she could use the Force. But she wasn't a trained Jedi, no."

Ben nodded, and his thoughts were a torrent of anger and disappointment and joy.

"But you knew him, though?" he pressed. "You knew my grandfather?" This was directed at Luke, and Luke alone.

Luke nodded, slowly, curling the fingers of his prosthetic hand into a slow, deliberate fist. They tingled and ached, for the first time in years, and for a long moment, he could only nod.

"I met him," Luke said. "Before he died. He was... a great man."

Leia opened her mouth, and Luke met her gaze until she looked away and closed it.

"He was a great man," he repeated again. "And a great Jedi."

Ben nodded, and leaned into his uncle for a hug.


	3. Mom's Side of the Family

The hatch of the _Millennium Falcon_ swung open, and Han Solo stepped out into the mostly-empty hangar.

"Well," he muttered, half to Chewie and half to himself, "we're home."

Ben was waiting for him by the blast doors, where Han had somehow known he would be. Just because Han was useless with the Force didn't mean he didn't know his kid. No matter what time of night he and Chewie got home, Ben would always be here. Waiting.

Sometimes Leia waited with him, but not tonight. Tonight, their son was alone.

"Hey, Ben!" Han raised a hand, cracked an exhausted smile. "Sorry we're late."

Chewie roared.

Then Ben was running across the hangar—he'd grown so much in the past six months—with his face tilted up, arms held wide.

Han stepped back—an old reflex—and Ben stopped his charge in mid-stride. His arms fell, and his face fell with them, and Han stepped forward, wishing he'd had whatever intuition would have told him to open his own damn arms to his son.

"Ben..."

"It's my birthday."

 _Shit._

"Uh, yeah. I know."

And it was times like this Han wanted to curse the blasted Force and all the intuition that came with it. What kind of screwed-up universe was it when a father couldn't even lie to his son?

"Hey, Ben. I'm sorry. We ran into these fighters, okay? Bunch of ex-Imperials don't know the war's over. It's not my fault!"

Ben shook his head.

"Come on, kid. Let's..." Han's tired mind searched for anything to make this better. "Let's celebrate."

"It's the middle of the night."

"That's right!" Han nodded, trying to force the phony joy into his... mind? aura?... as well as onto his face. "Just you and me, kid. And Chewie. Wanna take the _Falcon_ for a ride?"

Ben didn't. Han didn't need the Force to see that—that no matter how many of his stubborn, disagreeable genes the kid had, he hadn't inherited Han's or even his Uncle Luke's yearning to fly. But to Han's surprise—and, from the sound of it, Chewie's too—his son looked up at him and said, "Okay."

"Okay?" It came out sounding like a question, and Han shook his head, made himself sound like he wasn't too shocked. "Okay! So, uh, I'll just, uh... get things ready and... Hey, Chewie?" he said out of the corner of his mouth. "Go get the _Falcon_ ready, okay?"

Thirty minutes later, Chewie was initiating the takeoff sequence, and Han was in the back, brewing up two cups of coffee in a machine as ancient and ornery as the ship herself. It came out tasting more like black sludge than anything else, but Han grimaced, took another sip, and handed the second cup to Ben.

"Go ahead. Drink it," he said. "It'll wake you up."

"I'm awake." But Ben sniffed at the drink and took a tiny, obviously uncomfortable sip before setting the cup to the side.

"Okay, yeah." Han waved Chewie aside. "Thanks, buddy. Yeah, get back there. Kid here's my co-pilot tonight."

Chewie roared, and Han held up his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay. Just tonight. I swear."

Ben climbed into the co-pilot's chair, and Han shot him an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that. Wookiees can be territorial, you know?"

Ben didn't seem to care about Chewie, though. He was looking around the cockpit, at the deepening spread of the stars, with a wonder that never quite meshed with the apparent apathy the kid had for flying itself. Ben had always liked old junk, anyway. The _Falcon_ , R2-D2. Anything from the Clone Wars. Maybe that, at least, kind of made him a kid after Han's own heart.

"So, where to, kid?" Han asked. "Galaxy's the limit, as long as I get you home for breakfast. Don't want your mom to slap me with a kidnapping charge or anything," he said, only half joking.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you and mom always fight?"

"We don't _always_..." Han began, but when he saw the look on his son's face he stopped. Dropped the act. Sighed. "I don't know, kid. We always have. Maybe it's because we met during the war. Neither of us knows how to talk without a blaster."

That wasn't true, though. Leia did. Han was the one who didn't know what to do with peace. He kept looking for trouble, and it was hurting his son. And even though he saw that, he couldn't stop.

"It's addicting, you know. Excitement. Hard to settle down after all that." But Ben was... what, now? Seven? It would be another decade or two before he'd understand.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't Mom become a Jedi, like Uncle Luke?"

Han took another sip of his coffee, swung the ship to the right, and tried to put together an answer. "I don't know, kid. It wasn't her thing. She likes this stuff. Moving armies. Negotiating. Changing the galaxy, one trade route at a time."

"What about the Force?"

Han shrugged. "She likes that, too. I guess. But... hey, this is just between you and me, kid, okay?"

Ben nodded. Smiled. And Han couldn't help but smile back.

"Well, don't tell your mom I said this, but... I think your Uncle Luke got the bigger share of the Jedi genes, if you know what I mean."

"You mean Mom's not very good at it?"

Han almost laughed. "Nah. She's good at it. She's just... just not as good as Luke, that's all."

And with that, Ben grew quiet. He looked out the window, raised his fingers to his lips. Thinking. Working out his next question. Han sighed.

"Look, kid. Just... try not to worry about it, okay? The Force, the Jedi. Makes you crazy if you think about it too much, you know?"

And then, out of nowhere: "Did you know my grandpa?"

"My dad?" Han tried to brush the question aside. "Nah, I never knew him. Better off without him, you know?"

"Not your dad," Ben pressed. "Mom's. Anakin Skywalker."

Han nearly spit his coffee all over the console.

"Who's been telling you about Anakin Skywalker?"

Ben swiveled his chair around, looked Han straight in the eye. He had Leia's eyes, that was for sure.

"Uncle Luke said he knew him."

"Knew him?" The words tasted foul in Han's mouth. "I'm, uh... not sure you could call it that, kid."

"What was he like?"

Han took a deep breath and slowly, deliberately, turned his attention back to the controls.

"I think that's a question for your Uncle Luke, kid."

"Why won't anyone tell me about him?"

"I didn't know him, kid." Han was talking too fast now; his hands were sweaty on the throttle. How do you tell your son that his grandfather tortured you, froze you in carbonite, blew up his daughter's home planet, and nearly killed his own son? "Luke could tell you more than I could, okay?"

"Was he a Jedi?"

"Yes," Han sighed. That wasn't a lie. "Yeah. He used to be."

"What about you?"

"Me?" This conversation was starting to make Han's head hurt; he set the navicomputer to return to the base.

"Were you a Jedi? Can you use the Force?"

Han couldn't help himself; he did laugh this time, nervous and bitter and short.

"No."

"So it was only him, then. Only Anakin Skywalker."

"Yeah, kid." Han downed the rest of his coffee in a gulp. "You get that from your mom's side of the family. Not mine."


	4. Stronger Than Luke

_Keep an eye on Ben,_ Leia had said, but at the end of his first day of Jedi training—trial training, anyway; Han and Leia hadn't committed—Luke didn't see anything in particular to worry him.

Ben was strong in the Force—largely untrained, but since most of the Jedi had been wiped out decades ago, the rest of his students were starting at different places in their lives as well. Some of them were children, discovered at a very young age. Others had lived for years in hiding, aware of their powers but unsure exactly where they came from. Still others had made it all the way to adulthood with no good explanation for their uncanny luck.

Ben was strong. He was not the strongest student here, but he was far from the weakest, and the impulsive streak that seemed to worry Leia was nothing more than what Luke had felt at his age.

"Okay. Good." Luke clapped his hands. "All right. That's enough for the day. Ben?" He pulled his nephew aside from the rest of his students. "What did you think of your first day?"

Ben only shrugged. He was like that. Quiet. Private. Always thinking about something, but reluctant, Luke sensed, to share whatever it was with the world.

"You did well." Luke smiled. "Can you help me clean up?"

They worked together in silence, restacking the rocks and bits of scrap metal that had been used for levitation practice that day.

"Do you think you'd like to stay on here?" Luke pressed again, after awhile. "If your mother and father decide they want you to?"

"Yes!"

Ben put aside the crate of equipment he'd been holding, and looked up, a fierce passion in his eyes. His presence was... like a flare, Luke thought, his enthusiasm infectious. A smile spread to Luke's face as well.

When the sun hung low in the sky, and the other students had begun to light the torches that marked the way to the dining hall, Luke whispered conspiratorially in his ear. "What do you say to a special dinner tonight?" he asked. "Just you and me?"

This had been planned, of course, and the others all knew that Luke had been asked to keep an eye on his nephew. He didn't plan to read the boy's mind, exactly, but time alone, without the signatures of others around them, would give him a chance to better understand Ben's place in the Force—and whether Leia's concerns about him were founded.

Ben's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Just tonight. Tomorrow, we eat in the hall with the others." Luke knew he was supposed to be worried, but the pure, unclouded joy that he sensed in his nephew made him feel light—as if the weight of all those years since Yavin had flown away.

Luke rarely used the table in his own quarters, which were tiny and cramped and full of boxes of datacards. It was all the information he'd been able to find about the ancient Jedi—not enough, not since Vader and the Emperor had destroyed so much—but it was more than he'd had after Endor.

"The food's not much," he apologized, ladling stew out of an earthen pot and pouring milk—white, not blue, but the kids around here seemed to like it—into metal cups. "But we make it all ourselves. This all comes from the Force," he began, but then, realizing that their special dinner was about to turn into a lecture, he shook his head and instead asked, "Do you have any questions about what we did today?"

Ben shook his head. "No. It was easy." And then he returned to his food.

Luke nodded, took a bite of the stew, and tried to figure out how to bring up what Leia had mentioned. "Your mom told me—"

"Uncle Luke?"

And then, as if he'd known what Luke had been about to say, Ben changed the subject.

"What happened to your hand?"

Luke's smile fell. It was a question he had been asked a thousand times, and he usually smiled and answered, politely but firmly, "I lost it in the war." But this was his nephew. And he suspected Ben knew that much already.

"I lost it a long time ago," Luke said. "Before you were born. You knew that, right?"

Ben nodded.

"Well, like any machine, the parts wear out. I've had... three or four prostheses—hands—by now." It was four. Exactly four, counting the one that had been damaged at Jabba's. But it somehow seemed better to make it look to Ben like he hadn't been counting. "This one doesn't really look like a hand. But it's supposed to be easier to fix it if something goes wrong when I'm out, away from the medical center."

Ben said nothing. His eyes were transfixed on the mechanical parts, still new and gleaming in the light. It made Luke feel a little weird. Self-conscious. But it was his nephew, so instead of hiding his hand under the table, he held it out for Ben to see.

"It looks strong," Ben said.

"It is. It took a lot of practice to be able to use it without breaking things." And although that wasn't a good memory by any stretch of the imagination, it was kind of funny in hindsight. Luke smiled.

"Can you take it off?"

"Not by myself." Luke rolled up his sleeve, let Ben see where the metal parts ended, where it attached to his arm. "It doesn't feel exactly like this hand"—he raised his left—"but it's pretty close. I don't think I'd want to take it off."

"That's pretty cool," Ben said, but his expression was serious.

Luke half-laughed, pulled his sleeve back down. "Now, Ben, about your training."]

"Who did it?"

"W-what?"

"You're the strongest Jedi in the galaxy," Ben insisted, and there was something dark behind his eyes. "How could someone... do that to you?"

Luke closed his eyes, gathered all of the light he could feel in the Force around him. Tried to push out the sadness, the regret, the longing he still felt for his father, and the anger and confusion he was feeling now, from Ben.

"I wasn't always strong, Ben." And now that he had started the story, he knew that he would have to tell it all. "I had... just begun my training. Just like you. And I though that what I had learned made me strong enough to face Darth Vader."

"Darth Vader." Ben nodded. "I know who he is. He was with the Empire."

Luke nodded. "That's right. He was also strong with the Force. But instead of using it for good, like the students you met today did..." Luke's voice grew distant, and he couldn't keep out the thread of grief. "Darth Vader used it for evil. He used the Force to hurt people. He even... killed my former teacher. It was because of him, and the Emperor, that the Empire was able to hurt as many people as it did."

He studied Ben's face, looking for any sign, either there or in the Force, that this was going over the eight-year-old's head. But he understood, or thought he did. Luke went on.

"My Jedi Master warned me not to go," he said—unsure, a decade later, whether or not his choice had been a good one. "But I thought I could do it. I thought I could face him, and defeat him." He held up his hand again, with a wistful half-smile. "I was wrong. I lost my hand, and I lost my first lightsaber, that had belonged to..."

This was too much. Too much for what was supposed to be a happy occasion. Too much, maybe, for an eight-year-old boy. Too much for Han and Leia's child, when he didn't have their permission to be having this conversation at all.

"It had... belonged to my father," Luke concluded. "Anakin Skywalker."

"What happened to him?"

"Ben." Luke sighed. "That's a very long story."

"What happened to Darth Vader, then? Did you kill him?"

Something uncomfortable crept into Luke's stomach, his chest. This was wrong. This conversation was wrong. He shouldn't have brought it up, like this. Should have planned in advance what to say.

"No, Ben," he said, in a voice that was tight and constricted. "And that's a story for another time. The important thing to know..." He cleared his throat. "The important thing to know is that, if you commit to becoming a Jedi, you must complete your training. I left too early. I overestimated myself. And it ended up hurting me, and the people I loved most in the world."

Ben nodded, then returned his attention to his stew. But his thoughts were in turmoil, and when he looked up again, he said. "I can't believe he was stronger."

NOTE: Just wanted to say a big thanks, and Merry Christmas to everyone who has read this so far! FYI, I've only seen TFA twice so far, and am basing this mostly on initial gut-reaction impressions and a LONG, LONG time spent as a fan of the original trilogy. Thank you so much, and I hope you continue to enjoy! :)


	5. The Rest of the Truth

"Han." Leia was practically crying into the comlink. "Han, please. I need you to come home."

"...busy. Taking care of this..." The connection was full of static, and she couldn't even hear his pathetic excuse. "Han," she begged again, "this is your _son._ Our son. He needs you." _I need you._ "I..."

"Chewie! Switch all power to the front deflectors! Hey, Leia?" His voice softened, just for a second. "I'm gonna have to call you back. I— Chewie!"

The com went dead. Leia closed her eyes as hard as she could, and willed her tears not to fall.

Luke said nothing, just took her into his arms. They didn't need to talk anymore, not about this. It wasn't fair, Leia thought, to put this burden on Luke. He wasn't Ben's father. This wasn't his job.

"Leia." His voice was low, calm, his presence as warm and as steadying as always. How could he be like this, when her whole world was falling apart? "Leia. We need to go. Ben's here."

He was. She hadn't felt him before, but she could, now that she thought about it. A spark of agitation. Annoyance. He didn't want to talk to her either.

"Han is..." she managed to choke out. "He isn't... I mean..."

"I know."

"We should wait. Until he can be here."

"Leia." She heard what Luke wasn't saying. That they had no way of knowing when that would be. If Han would ever be here again. "I messed up, Leia. I told him the wrong things. Please. Let me try to make it right?"

"But Han's his father."

"I know." Luke reached up, touched her cheek, and when he drew his hand away it glistened with her tears. "But Han's not a Jedi. Han wasn't there. We need to tell him, Leia. You and me."

Ben was sitting in the other room, a datapad on his lap. He looked up at the sound of the door, but then went back to whatever he'd been reading. Dark stars shone in his eyes.

"Ben?" Leia tried to calm her voice. "Can you put that away?"

He did, but the look on his face, and his presence in the Force, were annoyed. Petulant, and grey.

"Threepio says you've been asking for information about Darth Vader."

Luke shot her a warning glance— _Don't be angry. Be calm._

"It's for a school project," Ben replied—too quickly—and Leia's frustration surged at the lie.

"Ben."

"Ben." Luke echoed the name, but it was different when he said it—comforting, reassuring, warm. Leia let her brother sit next to her son, and she chose a chair on the far side of the room. "Ben. Do you know why your mom and I want to talk to you?"

Ben nodded. "I guess."

"We're not angry"—Was it Leia's imagination, or was that directed at her?—"but we _are_ concerned about you. Ben, I owe you an apology."

Ben wasn't expecting that; his surprise as he looked up was palpable.

"Why?"

"Because I understand how you feel. When I was a kid, and I asked my uncle to tell me about my father, he... he didn't quite give me the whole truth."

Ben's eyes flashed; his anger surged. "He lied?"

"No." Luke took a deep breath, and then: "Yes. He lied."

"And you lied to me. About my grandfather."

Leia shook her head. "No. No, Ben, that's not true!"

"We didn't lie to you," Luke went on. "Everything we've told you is true. But I think you're old enough, and mature enough now, to know the rest of the story, too."

Leia had agreed to this, but now her fingernails were etching lines in her palms. No. He wasn't ready. How could a child ever be ready, when she was an adult, and had never been?

"Luke, I—"

But if Luke heard her, he didn't reply.

"Your mother told you why she called you Ben?"

"After Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Luke nodded. "That's right. He went by Ben, too. And he was my father's—our father's," he amended, with a glance at Leia, "teacher."

Leia listened, or feigned listening, as Luke gave her son an abridged history of the Clone Wars, and the role the Jedi had played. Anakin Skywalker was conspicuously absent from the records, but Luke told it in a way that she knew would let Ben fill in the blanks—to imagine his grandfather as a hero.

"Do you have any questions?" Luke asked, and Ben shook his head. "All right. Now, Ben"—and again he looked at Leia—"what do you know about the Dark Side?"

"The Force has two sides," Ben repeated, as if from a memorized lesson, "the Light and the Dark. The Dark Side..." He paused, and when he spoke again the words were his own. "The Dark Side comes from hate and anger."

Luke nodded. "That's right. And fear. I've..." He paused, clenched his metal fingers, and Leia felt his presence consciously calm. "I've been afraid, too, Ben. And I've been angry. I know you've felt those things, too. My father—Anakin Skywalker—could also feel the Dark Side. All Jedi can. We have to be careful not to let it touch us, not to let it interfere with the good that we do. But Anakin—my father—became... very strong with it. And he... he lost himself to it, for a long time."

"Luke..." Leia interrupted again. There was no way a child could understand.

Ben frowned. "You mean he stopped being a Jedi."

Luke nodded. "That's right. My father was a good man. But he was... buried, I think, under his hatred, and his lust for power."

 _Lust for power?_ "Luke," Leia said. "He's just a boy."

"Did he get it?"

Ben asked Luke, but it was Leia who answered. "Get what?"

"Power." Ben looked at his mother, then back to his uncle. "Did the Dark Side make him stronger?"

"No." Luke's answer was too quick. "No, Ben, it didn't."

"What happened to him, then?"

"Ben." Luke looked his nephew in the eye, waited, until the boy returned his gaze. "I'm going to tell you something that... may shock you. It was shocking to me, when I heard it. And I want you to know that you can ask me, or your mother, any questions you have."

Ben nodded.

And all Leia could do was watch, and listen, as her brother turned to her only son, and said: "My father... became Darth Vader. He was your grandfather, Ben."

She expected him to react, somehow—to deny it, as she had, as Luke claimed he had, initially, on Bespin. To cry. To scream. To refuse to believe it.

But Ben did not.

"He became Darth Vader?" he repeated, slowly.

Luke nodded. "For over twenty years. You asked me if I killed him, Ben. I didn't. He died to save me. He saved my life. He came back to the Light Side in the end."

But Ben wasn't listening, and Leia knew it. Those dark stars were in his eyes again.


	6. A Start

Han hadn't really expected Ben to want to talk to him. But he hadn't expected him to throw scrap metal at his bedroom door either.

"What the—!" Han jumped back. "Hey!" It came out angry. He lowered his voice, stepped up to the still-closed door, and tried again. "Ben. What's going on in there? Look, kid, I just wanna talk."

Something else hit the door, a shattering of plasteel and glass.

"I've got nothing to say to you!"

"Come on. Your mom and your Uncle Luke are worried."

"But not you?"

"Hey, I'm worried too! Look, Ben, I know I haven't really been around, but—"

Another crash. An angry scream.

Years of habit kicked in. Han rested one hand on his blaster.

"Hey, kid." He tried to sound friendly. Like the kind of dad he'd heard about, but never had. "Your mom gave me the override codes. I'm gonna get in there and talk to you. I'd just... you know..." Another crash. "I'd rather you open the door?"

Ben did.

Han wasn't sure what he was expecting, behind the fortress of his son's bedroom door. But it wasn't this. The floor was littered with broken... something. Junk. Scrap parts. Pieces of metal that, at least to Han, looked like part of the solar arrays on a TIE fighter.

He raised his hands, picked his way across the floor, to where his son sat cross-legged in the middle of the chaos. What, had he opened the door with the Force or something? Han raised his hand to the back of his neck to try and rub away the chills.

"Ben?"

Ben looked up, then back down. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his cheek.

"Hey, what happened here?"

"It's broken." He held up a piece of metal, twisted and covered with blaster burns. Han had no idea what it had originally been.

"Yeah." Han knelt behind his kid, tried to change what he feared was an expression of disgust into one of... what? Fatherly concern? "I can see that. You're bleeding, kid. Want me to get you a bacta patch?"

Ben only shook his head.

"Okay." Han stood, looked around his son's room. He hadn't set foot in here in years. The last time he'd been here, the walls had been covered with posters of fighters, speeders. There'd been a stuffed Wookiee on the shelf on the far wall. Kids' stuff, picked out by Han, by Leia. By Luke, sometimes. By Threepio, when no one else could bother.

Now, the room looked more like Ben.

The shelves were lined with a collection of what could only be described as vintage trash. It was old, that was for sure, but most of it was too ruined to have any value. Han fingered what looked like a torn-off Imperial rank insignia, picked up a section of some kind of command console. He looked back at his son. "Where'd you get this stuff?"

Ben shrugged, and Han thought he wasn't going to answer. But then he said, "Traded for it."

He was nine years old. What the hell did he have to trade?

It wasn't all Imperial stuff, though. Kid had most of a DL-44 blaster. "Nice." Han picked it up, inspected it. "This thing's not loaded, is it?"

Ben shook his head. "Broken."

"Good."

And then Han stopped, staring down at the scrap of—paper? No, not paper, it was some kind of hide—in his hand. A poster. An Imperial recruitment poster. And there, staring right out the middle of it, was a face—well, a mask—Han hadn't seen in ten, eleven years.

"What's this?"

Ben looked up, his expression blank. Unreadable. "It's a poster."

"Yeah, I can see that. Hey, Ben. I, uh, I think it's real great you're into history and all, but..."

"It's not history," he said. "It's our family."

"Not mine." Han shook his head. "Your mom told me she told you about Vader. If you need somebody to, you know, talk to?"

Ben smiled. "I'm fine."

"You, uh... you know what he did to me, right?"

Han didn't talk about Bespin, though. If Ben knew about it at all, it was from Leia. Maybe Luke. If Luke even knew about the torture part. He'd had enough to work through on his own.

"You said you didn't know him." And the tone of his voice said Ben already knew that wasn't true.

"Yeah?" Han took a deep breath. "Well, I lied. He tortured me, kid. Froze me in carbonite. He froze me, and sent me off with a bounty hunter to—hell." The look on Ben's face stopped him. "You don't even care."

"Why should I?"

"Because I'm your father, kid! And Vader... Ben, he was bad news."

"People listened to him."

"Yeah, because he'd kill them if they didn't."

"It's better than no one listening at all."

That was it. Han had had enough. He crumpled the poster into a ball and threw it down, into the shards of glass. "I am listening to you kid. I'm trying. But I'm getting kind of scared of what I hear. Look... I don't think it's a good idea for you to go study with Luke."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think it's Luke you want to be like!"

Ben picked up the poster and smoothed it out—it had survived somehow for a decade or two, and wasn't much the worse for wear from being crumpled. He looked at it—thinking, maybe, about Vader and who he had really been. For a second, Han's heart soared. He thought, just maybe, that he had started to get through.

"You don't want to be like that, kid," he said, as softly and as gently as he could manage. "Luke says he was... I don't know, half machine."

"He was strong," Ben insisted in a whisper.

"Yeah," Han said. "But strength isn't everything."

Ben looked down, at the ruins of whatever he had smashed, and said, "I'm sick of being weak."

Han knelt, picking up fragment after fragment of blasted TIE fighter or whatever, until he couldn't hold anymore.

"You're not weak, Ben."

"I'm not strong."

Han nodded. He remembered all too well how it felt to be a poor, worthless, unloved kid. Ben wasn't poor or unloved, though. It was just that the people who loved him weren't very good at showing it.

"There's plenty of time to be strong, kid." Han reached out and, with the hand that wasn't full of broken glass, ruffled his only son's hair. It was a stiff, awkward gesture, and Ben flinched at the touch. "Now, come on. Let's clean up this stuff. Before your mom sees it and freaks out, right?"

Ben said nothing, but he took the piece of twisted metal to the garbage chute.

Han told himself it was a start.


	7. Inviting It In

"Han!" Leia cried for what felt like the millionth time. "Han, please. We need to talk."

"About what?" Han shouted right back at her. It kicked her political instincts into gear. She pushed down her anger, made herself calm. At least, she made herself look and sound it.

"Look at this."

Han looked away. "We've been through this before."

"Han, please?"

And he looked up at her, tired and lost, his face lined ten years older than the forty-three he really was.

"If it's about our son, I'm done with it, Leia."

Now he wasn't even using Ben's name.

"Han," she said. "It's not his fault. It's not his fault you and I don't know how to be happy."

"Don't know how..." he started to mutter. But then he nodded, and sat down. He spread his legs, put one elbow on the armrest, and used the other index finger to half-shrug into the air. The same cocky smuggler she'd fallen in love with after Yavin. Maybe it was Leia who'd grown up all wrong.

She couldn't speak—didn't want to scare him off, couldn't think of anything meaningful to say. The holo, she hoped, would say it all, would show Han why Ben needed to be trained.

"You put a spy camera in his room?" Han scowled.

"It's not his room. This was outside the base. Han, the cameras were already there." And that wasn't the point. Why couldn't he see?

"Look." She pointed, as a shaky blue figure who was obviously—at least to his parents—Ben walked into one of the training yards with a box.

"What's that?" Han asked.

Leia shook her head. "Toys. Junk. It doesn't matter. Watch, Han. Please?"

And they watched. Leia watched, for the tenth, the twentieth, the hundredth time that day as her son—their son—extended his hand and, with nothing but the power of the Force, raised a piece of something from the box and made it hover in the air. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he threw it—again, with the Force—against the wall, and watched as it tumbled to the ground.

"Jedi stuff," Han muttered.

Leia scowled. "You don't think it's weird that he's throwing his things against the wall?"

"He's a kid," Han said. But there was something in his voice, something about the way he leaned forward. Something about the way he touched her, if only through the Force, when he'd been pulling away for years.

"You see it."

"Yeah, I see it."

Leia's mouth was dry. "It gets worse."

The first time she had watched this, she'd almost cried at this point with relief. It looked, if anything, like Ben was trying to quiet his thoughts. He stood, with his eyes closed and his arms held out to the sides, looking—in the admittedly shaky hologram—a lot like Luke did, when he meditated. Felt the Force. Found focus.

But when Luke did it, his motions and expressions became calmer, cleaner. Like he had pushed all the dark thoughts out.

Ben was inviting them in.

He broke his stance. His back was to them, and when he raised his arms—both arms, this time—it reminded her of the conductor at the Royal Alderaanian Orchestra, ushering in the angry third movement of her father's favorite long-forgotten symphony.

There was no sound, but if there had been, Leia knew what she would have heard. The ominous whisper of a half-imagined wind as Ben lifted not one, but all of his toys from the box, and the crash as he flung them, with an intensity that twisted and shook his whole body, to shatter to pieces against the wall.

"Turn it off." Han's voice was low and rough.

"Do you see what I mean, Han?"

"I said turn it off," he repeated. He was already standing to leave.

Leia turned it off and ran after him, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. And then she stopped, stepping back and forgetting to breathe for a second, as he looked her in the eye for the first time in—fine, it was hours, but to Leia it felt like years.

"Han," she pleaded. "You saw what he was doing. He was... using the Dark Side. He's deliberately using the Dark Side!"

Han shook his head. "This isn't on me."

"I'm not saying it is!" Anger rose in Leia's chest, and she drew herself up, as close to his height as she could. "But do you see why he needs to be trained? Why Luke needs to train him, not me?"

"No."

Han stepped back, reached for the controls for the door. "You need to keep him as far from the Force, as far from the Jedi as possible."

That was insane. "Han, he already knows."

"Then it's too late. Look, I didn't want to tell you, but he's got Imperial shit, posters of Vader in his room. I don't know what you and Luke told him, but he's got it in his head that Vader's some kind of hero."

"That's... that's not possible, Han. He knows what Vader did to us. No."

"I'm telling you, Leia, keep him away from the Force. He's Vader's grandkid, all right."

"He's not!" she protested, with tears in her eyes. It was only after she said it that she realized she had almost believed.

Han closed his eyes, took a breath. "This is it. If you teach him how to use that, I'm out of here."

Leia shook her head, her mouth half-open, trying to find the words. "What do you mean if?" she sobbed at last. "...You already are."

She could barely see Han, through her tears and her grief, as he slung his jacket over one shoulder and half-slapped, half-punched the controls for the door.

Leia always thought he would come back, after that.

Somehow, he always had before.


	8. Because Of You

Luke had selected items with innocent memories—a droid's old restraining bolt, a young pilot's childhood toy. Ben had chosen a half-melted datacard—worthless for whatever it had once contained, but still marked by the traces of the Force.

"Open yourself to it. What do you see?"

Ben wrapped his hand around the scrap of metal and closed his eyes.

"A room," he said. "Dark. Metal."

Luke nodded. "Good. Try to focus. Can you pick up on anything more?"

Lines folded between Ben's eyes. He frowned. "A hand? Somebody putting this in... a slot. A computer?"

"Okay. Anything else?"

"No," Ben said, but then his expression darkened, his frown deepening to what was almost a grimace.

Something dark passed across his face, over his presence. It was impossible. Luke had tested every one of these artifacts himself, made sure that there was nothing Dark in their signatures.

There was nothing of the Dark Side. But there was something.

Luke steeled himself, expecting Ben to fly into a rage, to channel the dark energy, as Leia had warned him he would.

But instead he fell back, letting out an empty cry, and he pushed. Luke felt it, as surely as if Ben had intentionally thrown him back. He pushed all the darkness away.

"No!"

"Ben?" Luke rushed to his nephew's side. He was unhurt, that much was obvious, but his panicked cries went on.

"Ben." Luke tried to hold him, tried to comfort him, but he didn't know what to do or say. When it came to the Force, he knew what he was doing, but not when it came to preteen boys.

"Get it away from me!" Ben cried. "Get him away. He's not my father," he spat through gritted teeth. "He's not."

Hesitantly, Luke picked up the half-melted chip and held it, trying to sense what Ben had seen.

There. It was a whisper, really, the faintest of a trace. Luke would never have noticed it if Ben's hadn't reacted the way he did.

It was nothing. Maybe Han had held this, once. Maybe he'd just been in the same room.

"Ben." Luke set the chip aside, put his arm around his nephew's shoulder, the way he had with Han and Leia so many times. But their son drew back, the look on his face one of sorrow, his light in the Force dim and cold. "Ben, I know this is tough. But Han won't be gone forever. He—"

Ben shook Luke's hand away and leapt to his feet. "I hope he is!"

"You don't mean that." Luke stepped toward his nephew, but the boy shook his head and slammed his fists against the walls.

"I hate him!" he screamed. "I hate him! I hate him!" He punctuated each outburst with a blow.

Luke waited. He waited for the hatred to subside, and when Ben's punches grew softer, lighter, more frustrated and exhausted—ripples in the Force instead of waves—he stepped closer again, took Ben's hands in his own, and turned the boy to look him in the eye.

There were tears on Ben's cheeks. "I don't want to be like him."

"You're not. Han is... a good man. But he's scared, I think, of things like this. He's scared of what you could become."

"He's scared I'll be stronger than him!" Ben spat out.

Luke shook his head, waited again for Ben's breathing to calm. "He's scared that you, and I, and your mother... that we have something he can't share."

"He doesn't understand me!"

"That doesn't mean he doesn't love you." The words were filled with grief. "I felt the same way about my uncle, Ben. He didn't want me to be a pilot. Or a Jedi."

"Then he was wrong!"

"No." Luke shook his head. "He was right. I did have the potential for darkness in me. I would have been safer, if I'd stayed on the farm."

"You would have been miserable."

"Maybe that too." Luke smiled, but it was a sad smile, a wistful one. A smile for Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

"I could be great," Ben pleaded, almost like it was a question. "It's our heritage. It's his!"

"Ben." Luke's voice was breaking, along with his heart. "Vader... wasn't great." He looked away.

"He was stronger than you."

"No, he wasn't."/

To say any more would be to go directly against Leia's wishes. But Ben needed to know the truth—that he did have a great heritage. And that it came from Anakin Skywalker, not Darth Vader.

"How much do you know about Endor, Ben?"

Ben's eyes grew distant; he drew back. "I know he died."

"He died to save me. The Emperor..." Luke closed his eyes and turned away.

He could feel it, still, like it had been yesterday—the power of the Dark Side, ripping through his veins, into his bones. The smell of his own flesh, singeing and burning. The floor of the Death Star, cool against his face. And he could see his father, the mask of Darth Vader, through vision that wavered and flared. He could hear his own voice: "Father, please."

He didn't know if he could tell it to Ben.

He tried. He tried, and when he was done, Ben looked up at him with large, empty eyes.

"Do you understand?" Luke asked, once again. "He was Anakin, my father, at the end."

Ben was silent, his presence a storm of warring thoughts.

"He came back to the Light, Ben," Luke urged. "It saved him. He saved me."

"He died because of you," Ben muttered.

"He died _for_ me. For us. To rid the galaxy of the Emperor."

"The Dark Side... killed my grandfather." He sank to the floor, put his head in his hands.

"He had been injured," Luke explained, "so many years before..."

"You took off his mask."

And after all this time, that was still a blow.

"He was dying already."

If that was true.

"Because the Dark Side was stronger."

"No."

Ben hid his face, for what seemed like an eternity. Luke couldn't touch him. Couldn't even move.

And then he looked up, and his face was like a child.

His voice was empty.

"Vader was weak, too."

* * *

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading! I can't swear that I won't write more in this timeline or with these characters, but I do think that I've taken this as far as I can without getting into my own headcanon about Rey's past and parentage... so in the interest of at the very least not contradicting canon, I'll be stopping here for awhile.

This was my first foray into fic in four and a half years... and has managed to be more popular than most of my other stories put together! Thank you so much for the ego boost! This was fun and cathartic to write, and I hope it touched some of you too. :)


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